


on the nature of daylight

by hudders-and-hiddles (huddersandhiddles)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Mornings, Post-Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, mood piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 02:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huddersandhiddles/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: John wakes up in 221B for the first time.





	on the nature of daylight

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thing that's been almost done in my drafts for ages, and I finally decided to finish and post. 
> 
> The title comes from the [Max Richter piece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6RnT8uxOiw) I listened to while writing it.

He wakes at first light, just as the shadows are slinking back toward the walls, the sky outside softening from charcoal to tender, bruised purple.

London is quiet, not yet roused into the chaos of another work day, and John closes his eyes again and listens.

For once, there's no rattling cough from the pensioner across the hall. There's no early-morning wailing from the infant next door. There's no too-fast hammering of his heart against his ribs as he startles awake, the spectres of his nightmares clinging, still clawing.

There's silence, blissful and rare, and John in the middle of it, some unnameable feeling brushing warm against his skin. It's not the copper-scented tingle of fear or the deep, hollow ache of loneliness or the seeping cold of despair. It's something he hasn't felt in so long he's forgotten the word for it. Something in short supply in a bedsit across the city. Something he’d lost somewhere amidst the swirling dusts of Afghanistan, punched out of him in a spray of fine crimson.

The sky shifts toward slate blue, hazy light filtering in pearl grey through the dusty curtains. John watches it trickle in, pooling silver soft on his unfamiliar new surroundings--a desk beneath the window, a wardrobe standing silent sentry in the corner, a small table beside the bed. It isn't all that different from where he'd spent the last two months. The same basic furniture. The same off-white walls.

But still, it feels new. It feels exciting.

All because of the man downstairs.

It’s been less than 48 hours since they met. Less than 12 since John had come to look at the flat with nervous anticipation twitching in his fingertips. In that short time, there’d been a dead woman in a house in south London and a kidnapping by the world’s most overbearing brother, a foot-chase across rooftops and a drugs bust and a late-night Chinese dinner, a gunshot and a life saved in the quiet of the dark. The last day has held more excitement than all the days since John has come back to England combined, and for the first time in months, maybe in years, he'd gone to bed looking forward to waking up again.

And now he's here, watching the morning blossom into mottled pinks and tangerines, the golden warmth of it splashing vibrant across cream-colored walls, all because he had offered his mobile to a madman he'd just met. Even if it had only been an exercise in proving his own cleverness, Sherlock had looked at John in that moment and seen him. Had seen that he was more than a cane and a limp and an unsteady hand. Had seen that he had nowhere to go but down into the depths of his own sunken darkness. Had seen all the things John wished someone would see and all the things he desperately hoped they wouldn't, and instead of turning away, he'd invited John in. He'd asked him to stay--no, he'd told him to.  _Doctor Watson will take the room upstairs._  As if John had no choice in the matter at all. And he hadn't, not really, because if the choice was between going back to bumbling around a bedsit, staring at the blinking cursor on another blank page, waiting for the end, and being here with Sherlock Holmes, there wasn't a choice to be made.

Or rather there was, and John had resoundingly, full-heartedly declared it when he’d walked up two flights of stairs last night rather than out the front door.

And so he’s here, with a new bed and a new room and a new life to call his own. He curls his toes against the soft weight of the duvet and settles deeper underneath, wondering if he might manage a few more minutes of sleep before the day begins. All around him, dawn slips in like a happy secret, and for the first time in a long time, he feels like he’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com).


End file.
